Word: buzhardt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Perhaps it was not a bomb, but the pin was soon pulled on a fair-sized hand grenade. Next day, reading nervously from a slip of paper, Special Presidential Counsel Fred Buzhardt told Judge John J. Sirica in a Washington federal courtroom that 18 minutes of conversation on one of those tapes was impossible to hear. It had been mysteriously obscured by an unwavering "audible tone." The President, Buzhardt conceded under questioning, had been told of this before he spoke to the Governors...
While Sirica scowled at Buzhardt and obviously struggled to conceal his irritation, the President's lawyer claimed that "the phenomena occurs during the course of the conversation-that is, not at the beginning or end"-between Nixon and his former chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, on July 20, 1972. This was just three days after five men were arrested during the wiretap-burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters. It was also after Haldeman and another former aide, John Ehrlichman, had been briefed on the arrests by then Presidential Counsel John Dean...
Medium-High. Buzhardt could not explain how the tone had got on the tape. He said Government technicians had been told about it, had listened to it, and could not account for it either. He had even allowed one of the prosecutors, Carl Feldbaum, to hear the affected portion. Feldbaum described the noise as a "medium-high...
...court, Prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste urged Sirica to take immediate custody of all of the subpoenaed tapes. Buzhardt objected that several conversations not under subpoena were also on the reels containing the desired recordings. Unmoved, Sirica indicated he would order the reels subpoenaed if they were not voluntarily turned over to him by Monday of this week. He added sourly: "This is another instance that convinced the court that it must take steps to safeguard the tapes, to make certain nothing like this happens again between now and when we actually listen to the tapes...
...sound was present on the original recording, it presumably would have been detected by any of a number of White House officials who have heard some of the tapes. They include the President, Miss Woods, Haldeman, Presidential Aide Stephen Bull and former Presidential Aide Alexander Butterfield. According to Buzhardt, the discovery was made only on Nov. 14, when he and another White House counsel, Samuel Powers, were cataloguing the tapes for presentation to the court. If the sound was not introduced in the original recording of the conversation, it could have been picked up during an attempted erasure or rerecording...